Fhyzics' P-S-P Approach in Business Analysis

1. Fhyzics' P-S-P Approach in Business Analysis Business analysis is the process of requirements gathering, understanding, analysing, documenting, communicating and finally recommending right solutions to the stakeholders. One of the major activities of a business analyst is to work closely with the stakeholders in gathering the requirements and creating a common shared understanding among the stakeholders, which leads to a solution. Business Analysts need stakeholders for two reasons: (1) BAs develop solutions to meet the very needs of stakeholders, so better understand what stakeholders want and (2) As the stakeholders have good knowledge about the processes and systems within the organizations, so take advantage of their knowledge. Hence the success of a BA project is very much dependent on having the right stakeholders in the cross functional team. How to select the right stakeholders? Fhyzics Business Consultants Private Limited pioneered an approach called P-S-P and successfully used it in numerous projects. The acronym P-S-P stands for Processes, Systems and People. In P-S-P approach, the BA moves in a sequential order to find the stakeholders. First, identify the processes that will be affected by the BA project, second, identify the systems and then select the stakeholders.

2. Processes: What is a process? It is a set of sequential activities, carried out in a predetermined order to deliver value to the customer. There are three types of processes - (1) Primary Processes (2) Secondary Processes and (3) Management Processes. Primary processes are those that delivers the mission of the organization. For example, a hospital is in existence to treat patients and to provide diagnostic services, hence these are primary processes. Secondary processes are those that are supporting the primary processes, such as housekeeping and information technology related processes in a hospital. Management processes are those that control and monitor these primary and secondary processes. All organizations on earth have a finite number of processes at a given point of time. As Business Analysts, we need to list out the primary, secondary and management processes in our organizations.

3. Once we know these processes, for any given business analysis project, one will simply check mark the processes that are going to be affected by the business analysis project in hand. Systems: What are systems? Systems are policies, procedures, software applications, hardware, machineries etc. that are sitting on the above processes to help the processes to function more effectively. Once the BA knows the processes then it is very easy to see the systems, as the BA will selecting only those systems that are connected with the selected processes. People: The people here means 'stakeholders'. Who should be the stakeholders? That should be the people who have knowledge and experience on the processes and systems. In addition to that, stakeholders should also have good attitude and motivation to work on BA projects. So the BA identified the processes then found out the systems, which collectively helped the BA to see the stakeholders. www.fhyzics.com